On 7 January 2016, National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) announced that it had formalized its ongoing program for
detecting and tracking near Earth objects (NEOs) as the Planetary Defense
Coordination Office (PDCO). It will remain within NASA’s planetary Science
Division under Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
Main Functions:
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It will supervise all NASA-funded projects to
find and characterize asteroids and comets that pass near the orbit of the
Earth around the sun.
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It will take a lead role in coordinating interagency
and intergovernmental efforts in response to any potential hazards that impact
Earth.
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It will also issue notice of close passes and
warnings of any detected potential threats, based on credible science data.
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It will continue to assist to coordinate Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), other U.S. agencies and international counterparts
to participate in the precautionary actions against an actual impact hazard.
NASA started discovering the NEOs in 1998 and since then
13500 NEOs were discovered with 1500 new addition every year. It was engaged in
worldwide planning for planetary defense for some time.
Japanese astronomers’ team discovered the second largest
black hole in Milky Way. They mapped high velocity compact cloud called
CO-0.40-0.22 with a mass 100000 times that of the Sun around 200 light years
away from the centre of the Milky Way. The research related to this was
published in Astrophysical Journal Letters with the little ‘Signature of an
Intermediate Mass Black Hole in the Central Molecular Zone of our Galaxy’ on December
2015. A team led by Tomoharu Oka, a professor at Keio University observed this
mysterious cloud with two radio telescopes, the Nobeyama 45m Radio Telescope in
Japan and the ASTE telescope in Chile. These both telescopes are operated by
the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.
